Friday, December 28, 2012

A Touch of Adrenalin Helps

Walt and I are both totally discombobulated as to what day of the
week it is. We just got home from a nice visit in Santa Barbara. It should be
Tuesday. But it's Thursday. It's not helped by the fact that all TV programs
are in reruns right now, so our DVR is only recording Jeopardy and not much else.

It helped that I worked at Logos today. If I'm at Logos, it
must be Thursday. And though the touring company of Peter Pan opened last
night, the PR guy got a special dispensation for me to see it tonight instead, so it was
going to be a quick dinner after work and then off to Sacramento. Walt picked up
Chinese food on his way to pick me up and we went on home, filled our plates and settled
in to watch Jeopardy.

That's what we always do before one of these touring Broadway shows.
We watch Jeopardy and when it is over, we head to Sacramento for the 8
p.m. curtain and usually have a good 10 minutes to spare.

I don't know what it was that made me decide to check e-mail at
commercial time for Jeopardy, but I just did a quick pass to see if there was
anything interesting. There was an e-mail from the PR guy for Peter Pan
reminding me that for this show, the curtain was 7:30 instead of 8. At that
moment it was 6:45 and Walt was just starting to re-fill his plate. I told him we
had to leave NOW.

We were on the road within 5 minutes and, miraculously, I got out of
the car at 7:15 a block from the theatre and left Walt to park the car. I told him
I'd leave his ticket at the ticket window. I actually got my ticket with 10 minutes
to spare and, also miraculously, Walt managed to park and get to the theater before I got
my ticket. We were in our seats with a good 3 minutes to spare. I don't want
to cut it that close again!

As for the show, it was amazing. Oh, it was amazing for the
production values, but as I watched Cathy Rigby doing Peter Pan....again...and
watching all those aerial acrobatics--twirling, somersaulting high above the stage,
flying out over the audience sprinkling pixie dust, and all the other moves that you would
expect from a 2-time Olympic gymnast--I wanted to know how old she is actually.
I googled her during intermission (love those smart phones) and discovered the
woman is SIXTY YEARS OLD!!!!!When she did the show back in 2004, it was
her "farewell tour" and I was surprised that she had decided to do it again.
But...did I mention that the woman is sixty?

I had just turned 60 when I went to Australia in 2003 and was proud
that I was able to climb a frigging ladder. Once.

There was one of those serendipity moments at Logos this afternoon,
which make working there such fun. A woman came up to the desk to purchase two
books. One was a book on weaving and the other was a book on spinning. It had
a picture of a spinning wheel on the front of it and she was telling me that she knew the
woman who had written the book, which seemed to be like a self-published book.

At the same time, a guy came up to buy a Feng Shui book and glanced
at the books the woman was buying.

"I'm glad to see you bought that spinning book," he said.
I thought about buying it for my ex, but I think she is trying to get rid of books,
but she has a big collection of books on spinning."

They talked a bit more and the more they compared notes it turns out
that his ex was the woman from whom the woman had purchased her spinning wheel. She
said she knew her name because it was carved into the body of the spinning wheel. He
said he was the one who told her to do that because the previous owner had carved her
name on it and he told his then-wife that instead of sanding the old name off, she should
add her name to the spinning wheel in the hope that the next person who owned it
would do the same--which this woman was planning to do.

I asked if either of them knew a friend of mine, who is a spinner,
and both of them did.